In carrying out industrial processes, it is often essential to separate a specific component from a mixture of gases or metal vapors. The difficulty is compounded in the case of mixtures of nuclear isotopes, because of their identical chemical properties. Heretofore, the separation of isotopes was accomplished physically by taking advantage of the small difference in the weights of the isotopes.
The most important applications of this principle are:
1. gaseous diffusion in which the mixture is passed through thousands of stages containing porous barriers, PA1 2. gas centrifugation in which the mixture is spun at very high speed, and PA1 3. electromagnetic separation in which the whole mixture is ionized, accelerated by an electric field and selectively deflected by a magnetic field.
These conventional methods for achieving separation of isotopes have been very wasteful in the usage of electric power. At the same time, the apparatus used for carrying out the conventional methods was complex in design and particularly costly to construct.
Recent technological developments have rendered the selective ionization of a specific isotope economically feasible. However, since the charge is easily transferred from the ionized to the neutral component, quick separation is required. The currently employed process makes use of an electric field in order to accelerate, and thus separate, the ionized component. The electrons and ions thus accelerated subject the neutral background to an energetic bombardment which leads to its partial ionization, and consequently imposes severe limitations on the purity of the output product and on the efficiency of the process.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for the separation of components from a mixture of gases or vapors, which results in substantially high purity of the separated components.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a process for the separation of components from a mixture of gases or vapors which is efficient in terms of energy consumption.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an arrangement for the separation of components from a mixture of gases or vapors, which is simple in construction and may be economically fabricated.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide an arrangement of the foregoing character, which is highly reliable in operation and has a substantially long operating life.